


Tal-Vashoth

by Gimmemocha



Series: Kas-berasala [2]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-16
Updated: 2015-08-27
Packaged: 2018-04-14 22:29:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4582527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gimmemocha/pseuds/Gimmemocha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Since their return from slaying the broodmother, Evelyn and Iron Bull's relationship has been shaky at best. Now the tremors are rumbling throughout Skyhold, and no one is immune.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> (If you haven't read Two Weeks, you probably should just to grasp the relationship they have. I'd also recommend The Hunt.)

Evelyn Trevelyan didn't talk much about Skyhold, mostly because she didn't want anyone to think she was insane. Her first sight of the great keep as Solas led her and the rest of Haven's refugees through the mountains had taken her breath away. It seemed to slumber as they approached, lost in memories martial and defiant, taking no heed of simple mortal creatures.

She couldn't pinpoint when the air of the keep had changed. Gradually it seemed to rouse around her, as if the life it contained brought life to it. Skyhold quickened, some unheard pulse moving through its stone walls. The repairs uncovered new rooms, but in her heart she always felt that Skyhold chose to reveal more of itself to them.

To her.

Skyhold was not her home. It was her ally. Her friend. She would defend it against any invaders, not to save her own life or the lives of its other inhabitants, but to preserve its beloved stone, its dear vastness. She never left without saying a silent farewell to the keep, and never came back without taking a moment to touch a wall and express her happiness at returning.

Now, she sometimes thought she could feel the mood of the inhabitants, could know where she was most needed. She felt the keep itself responded to her own moods and wishes. Frightened refugees slept soundly. Wounded soldiers relaxed and suffered fewer nightmares. 

And when Evelyn herself was unhappy, Skyhold seemed to reflect that as well.

Since their return from killing the broodmother, Evelyn had not been sleeping well. She had overheard complaints and comments that made her think she was not the only one. Neither Cullen nor Neria seemed to be getting much sleep, and not for delightful reasons, either. Soldiers were more restless. There had been more scuffles and arguments.

So Evelyn tried to sleep, for everyone else's sake.

It wasn't working.

And the reason for that was beside her in bed, equally silent and unmoving. Equally awake.

Her head rested on a soft pillow, but she felt no comfort. Extra blankets covered her, but she still felt cold. She stared at the far wall, at the banister and the stairs that led down to the main keep and debated getting up to work. There were dispatches she hadn't gotten to, sorted into priority by Josephine. She wanted to take some of the burden of simple secretarial work off the woman who was technically the Inquisition's ambassador. She had been meaning to make a list of people who might be suitable for the task.

But she didn't move.

Neither did the man behind her.

"You're not sleeping," she said without turning.

"Might be," Iron Bull said.

"If you're not snoring, you're not sleeping."

"You're not sleeping either."

The banked fire crackled briefly as the burnt out logs settled.

On the wall, a soldier called out the watch.

Mountain wind whistled under a loose tile in the ceiling overhead.

"Oh for… This is ridiculous," she said, rolling over to face him. "Are we ever going to talk about this?"

Bull cracked one eye open. "Talk about what?"

"About what's wrong."

"Why? What's wrong?"

It was difficult to put any strength behind her punch when she was lying down, but she tried it anyway, driving a fist into his arm. "Ow!" he said. "What was that for?"

"You're being an ass!"

He sat up, scowling at her in the dim light of what was left of the fire. "How am I being an ass? I'm just lying here."

"Yes," she said, sitting up as well but holding the blankets to her to combat the cold in the room. "Yes, you're just lying there. Like you've been just lying there for days now."

"It's nighttime."

"I swear to Andraste, if you keep pretending like you don't know what I'm talking about, I will kick your Qunari ass out of this bed and down the stairs."

He kept scowling. "You don't believe in Andraste."

She kicked him, once, twice, then using both feet. "Get out!" she said. "Get out, get out, get _out_!" Each exclamation was punctuated with another kick.

"Sonofa… Evelyn!"

He twisted on top of her, trapping her legs under him. Before she could take another swing at him, he grabbed her wrists, fingers easily encircling them, and pinned them to the pillow above her head.

Anger and frustration melded with desire and lust. She glared at him but didn't struggle against his hold. Her hips shifted under him. "Is that what it takes?" she asked. "I have to fight you to get you to touch me?"

He released her instantly, turned away from her to sit on his side of the bed, elbows on his knees, head in his hands.

Evelyn closed her eyes against the rise of tears, but nothing could have stopped them from falling. "What did I do?" she whispered. "Please, just tell me what I've done."

He did not answer. She didn't, couldn't look at him. She tried to brace herself against the pain of him leaving, of feeling his weight lift off the bed, of hearing him walk away and out of her room.

He shifted a little and she bit her lip to keep from making any sound.

"Come here, Evelyn," he said quietly.

She didn't want to. She had never wanted anything more in her life. Slowly she slid across the bed, twisting to sit next to him. She looked up at him and did nothing now to try to hold back the tears, just let them spill.

Carefully, without meeting her gaze, he wrapped her in her blanket, then gathered her in his arms. He laid back down, holding her on top of his chest, folding his arms over her.

"Kadan," he murmured, voice rumbling under her ear. His hand stroked her hair, soothing and warm and so familiar. "You've done nothing wrong, I swear it. Believe me. Sleep now, girl."

But he didn't kiss her. And she didn't stop crying. She did, however, sleep.

 

Varric Tethras propped his booted feet up on the desk, just to get a rise out of Ambassador Josephine Montilyet. "Look, Ruffles," he said, resting his hands behind his head, "I'm all for keeping the peace. I like peace. Peace means fewer people poking me with sharp objects. But if you think for one second I'm sticking my nose into whatever's going on between the Inquisitor and her boyfriend, you are out of your Antivan mind."

Alas, Josephine was entirely too good at being a diplomat to shoo his feet off her desk or even to frown at him. At least not while she was asking him for a favor. "Unfortunately, the Inquisitor has few close friends, and none at all with whom she discusses truly personal matters. We can hardly ask a family member to intervene, and she is not devout enough to consult any clerics or Chantry members. You, in fact, are the only person with whom she has voluntarily spent private time."

"When you put it like that it sounds dirty." Nope, he told himself, don't think about that. Don't think about the feel of her lips, the sight of her on her knees… 

Josephine tsked at him. He took it as an accolade. It wasn't easy to get under her bronzed skin. "I am serious," she chided. "She is distracted, snappish, and has insulted at least three different diplomats."

"They're diplomats," he said, waving one hand dismissively. "Everyone insults them. They're used to it."

"Which will not prevent An Incident should she react similarly to visiting nobility."

"Y'know, when you say it that way, I can actually hear the capital letters."

"Are you going to help or not?"

"Not," he said decisively, swinging his feet down and letting them thump to the floor. "You're the diplomat. You do it. I'm going home."

Josephine tapped her feathered quill against the desk and eyed him.

He narrowed his eyes, suspicions flaring.

"Of course, Varric," she said smoothly, looking down at her desk. "If you think you can't help, then I will not force the issue."

This, he did not trust at all. "I mean it," he said. "There're some supplies going up to Warden Beardface in Amaranthine. I'm getting a ride, and a ship to Kirkwall from there."

"Excellent plan. I trust you do at least plan on telling her goodbye before you leave?"

"I suppose," he said.

"Good. I know she will appreciate it."

He hesitated. There was a trap here, he was certain of it. "But I'm leaving right after that."

"Very well."

"For Kirkwall."

"Have a safe trip."

Varric walked out, fighting the instinct that told him not to turn his back on her.

 

For an Inquisitor, she could be hard to find when she wanted to be. Varric poked around Skyhold in all the usual places. Generally she could be found wherever the crowd was thickest or wherever Iron Bull was. But he found the Qunari in the tower library talking to Dorian, and her normal buzzing horde of messengers, soldiers, courtiers, and advisors had scattered to the four corners of the castle.

A tip from Cullen led him to the stables where her spotted monstrosity of a horse was munching on hay all by his lonesome. Varric peered into the stall anyway, just in case she was hiding in the straw. 

The horse whuffled his hair.

"Easy now, Splotchy," he said, drawing back a little and patting the horse's soft nose. "I don't suppose you have any idea where she's hiding?"

The horse huffed sharply, blowing hot air and wetness onto Varric's hand.

"I'll assume that means no. Here," he said, wiping his wet palm on the horse, "you can have this back."

"I'm up here, Varric," he heard from overhead, Evelyn's soft accent rounding her words prettily.

He walked into the barn proper and up the steps. Sure enough, there sat the Inquisitor on a bale of hay, elbows on her knees, chin in her hands. She looked over at him. Her eyes were red-rimmed and red-shot, and those full, soft lips were curved down in an expression of pure misery.

Well, shit.

"You win, Ruffles," he sighed.

Evelyn looked away and Varric walked over, boots thunking on the wooden planks of the barn loft. "Normally, it'd be a dry joke to ask who died, but these days it's just not that funny," he said, sitting beside her. "Why don't I stick with just asking what's wrong?"

She shook her head a little.

"Come on," he said. "If you can't trust the guy who's probably writing the story of your life, who can you trust?"

"Believe me when I say you don't want to hear about it."

He reached into his shirt, fished in an interior pocket, and pulled out a handkerchief to hand to her. "So this is about Tiny, then."

She took it and wiped her nose, politely not offering the square of fabric back to him.

He waited.

After another minute, she said, "I almost lost you once over him," she said. "I won't risk our friendship."

"Well unless you're planning to blow me again…"

That got a laugh out of her. "Varric!"

"What? No one heard."

She shook her head, but didn't lose her smile entirely. Whatever sadness was weighing on her still framed it, though.

The sounds of the keep drifted around them. In the courtyard off to the left he could hear the supply wagons being loaded for the trip to Amaranthine. Still she didn't talk to him.

"Y'know, normally people just spill their guts to me whether I want them to or not," he said. "I'm starting to feel like I've lost my touch, here."

Nothing.

"C'mon, Princess," he said softly. "Everyone needs someone to talk to sooner or later."

"What about you?" she asked, glancing sidelong at him. "Who do you talk to?"

"Me? I've got Bianca." He hooked a thumb over his shoulder to his crossbow, her weight comfortable and settled. "She's not so good with advice, but she's a great listener."

A tiny flicker of her lips. Progress. He waited some more.

"He doesn't want me anymore," she said, such a thin, wan voice so different from her normal energetic humor.

"Who, Tiny? Bullshit."

She shook her head, using his handkerchief to catch the tears tumbling from her eyes. "He doesn't," she said. "He doesn't touch me. We haven't even kissed since before we got back."

Oh. Awkward. Varric scrubbed a hand across the back of his neck. Maybe he didn't want to hear this after all. "Uh…"

"I've done everything I can think of, but he just gives me this look like I'm some yappy dog piddling on his rug and he won't tell me why or what I've done wrong!"

She stopped talking, muffled her sobs in his handkerchief while he wanted desperately to be anywhere else. Like shooting Josephine until she looked like a hedgehog.

But damn if her heart wasn't truly breaking, and he wasn't that big an asshole. He slid an arm around her and tugged. The height difference made it a little awkward, but Evelyn was nothing if not bendy. She curled up into a ball of human sorrow, resting her head on his shoulder.

He tried to stop thinking about how soft she was and how good she smelled. 

Varric had never decided if it was Bull's plan for Evelyn and him to make a regular pastime of casual sex, but he had known even then that it wasn't going to happen. Not that he didn't have casual sex; it was the only kind of sex he had. The problem was the uneasy certainty that sex with Evelyn wouldn't stay casual for long.

When his anger (and panic) after their one scorching hot encounter had faded, he had taken careful steps to maintain the friendship they shared without letting it go further. But every now and then, just when he'd start to relax, she'd throw off some hint or comment that let him know, in no uncertain terms, she was still interested in a repeat.

And more.

All of which added up to him being the worst possible person to comfort her over hiccups in her relationship with that damned Qunari bastard.

"All right," he said. "What's going on?"

"I told you," she said, sniffling. "Nothing. He barely touches me, and when I ask him what's wrong, he doesn't answer or pretends nothing is."

Shit, this was just embarrassing. "When was the last time you uh… _did_?"

"In the caves," she said. "When we camped after killing that broodmother."

"Anything weird happen? Weirder than usual, I mean."

She laughed again, just a little, and wiped her face. She still didn't pull away, though. "No," she said. "Well…"

"Well?"

"Things got a little romantic."

He sighed. "Princess, romantic should not count as weird. Not even with you two."

"No, probably not."

"Well if that's all you've got, then I guess until he wants to talk about it, you're screwed. Metaphorically speaking, of course."

"Thanks," she said wryly, pushing away just enough to dab at her eyes one more time with his handkerchief, one hand on the hay bale beneath them.

She looked up at him.

His arm was still over her shoulder. He was so focused on her expression – her searching, pensive look – that he didn't realize at first he had buried his fingers in the soft length of her hair.

Evelyn leaned in, just a little, hesitant. Unsure. Too close.

He got up and stepped back. "I don't think so," he said, taking yet another step away and slapping down the part of him that wanted to take her up on the implicit offer. "Last time was because he told you to, this time it's because he hurt you. I'm getting real tired of this not being about me."

"I might believe that," she said, sitting upright, deflecting the sting of his words, "if I hadn't made other offers between now and then, offers you've also rejected." She swept a long-fingered hand over her eyes. "Fine," she sighed. "Never mind. I won't embarrass either of us again."

Rejection, he realized, was probably the last thing she needed right now. But, what, he was supposed to have sex with her just so she wouldn't feel bad about herself? "It's not that I don't want to say yes, Maker knows—"

The look she gave him could have blasted Skyhold flat. 

"I'd prove it, but I like to think even I have more class than that."

She shook her head and frowned, waving him off. "Just go away, Varric. I'm sure there's a barmaid or prostitute somewhere around more to your tastes."

"That was bitchy, even for you."

"Well I'm sorry I'm not in the mood be more polite!" she snapped. "Or did you imagine that no one knew about any of them? I'm the Inquisitor, nothing happens in Skyhold but that I hear of it, sooner or later. It's been wonderful knowing you'd rather take one of them to your bed than me, I can tell you that much."

He closed the distance between them in two strides, met her furious glare with his own. "The reason I stick with barmaids and prostitutes is because when I have to leave them behind, I can do it and not give a shit. If you think for one second you're in that class, you've got a rift open between your ears."

The fire in her eyes flickered and faltered. "Who says you'd have to leave?"

"Kirkwall is my home," he said.

"So is Skyhold!"

"You think I want to stay here and take second place to that lumbering wad of scar tissue and muscle my whole life? Thanks, but no thanks."

She tried to hold on to her anger, but he could see it sliding away from her, leaving behind only a hurt and uncertainty that tugged at him. The Inquisitor of Skyhold was, to put it simply, a too-heady mixture of determined strength, lethal power, and gentle vulnerability. 

Shit.

"So…" she said hesitantly, "you won't have sex with me because you think you might fall in love with me?"

He cupped her face in one hand, feeling the silk of her skin under his thumb as he stroked it over her cheekbone. "Princess," he said, "that's exactly what I think."

"You're a writer and a liar, Varric Tethras," she said softly. "How do I know that's not a line?"

"I guess you'll just have to trust me."

The moment begged for a kiss, but common sense won out over his sense of what would make a great story and he stepped back from her again. "I have to go," he said.

"Go?"

"Yeah, it's time I went home. I've already said my other goodbyes. I'm riding with the supply wagons to Amaranthine."

It struck her deeply. She was so easy to read. He wondered if she knew. "Please don't go," she whispered, shoulders slumping. "Not now. I can't lose you, too."

Varric was a master wordsmith. He excelled with the crossbow. He knew words, knew timing, knew the perfect moment and the perfect way to strike a killing blow. 

"Evelyn," he said, "you never had me."

He took one heartbeat to measure her reaction to his words, the widening of her eyes, the paleness of her skin, before he turned and walked down the stairs. Catching up with the soldiers in the courtyard, he hauled himself up into the back of one of the wagons just as the last of the soldier escort swung into the saddle. Wedging himself between two heavy bags of what felt like beans, he closed his eyes.

Maybe now she could let him go.

Maybe now he could let her go.


	2. Chapter 2

It was barely dawn, but Iron Bull had the Chargers out on the practice field. "Again!" he bellowed. "What's the matter, cupcakes, getting soft now that there are no demons to kill? Grim, get your sword up! It's not your cock, it's not going to stay up on its own!"

Grim glanced to his left at Krem.

"I know," muttered the lieutenant. "Let him work a bit more of it off first."

Grim grunted and went back to the pattern, shaking sweat out of his eyes.

"Gaah, NO!" Bull stalked over and slammed a rough hand into Grim's shoulder. "Shoulder, here! Arm, here! You want to get your gut slit open, do it in someone else's company, not mine!"

"Boss!" Krem said. 

Bull's head snapped around, his glare blazing at Krem. "What?"

Shaking his head, Krem stabbed the point of his sword into the ground. "Can I talk with you in private a minute?"

"No!"

"Fine," Krem growled. "Then I don't know what crawled up your ass and laid eggs there, but could you hurry up and dig it out?"

Bull took a step, then another, a third until he towered over the smaller man. "What did you say to me?" he asked softly.

Krem didn't give an inch. "Whatever is wrong, fix it," he said, enunciating each word. "And stop taking it out on us."

"I am your fucking commander!"

"And I am your fucking friend!"

Krem met Bull's glare unflinching, unblinking. Bull's fists tightened, the corded lines of muscle and tendon standing out in his neck. Abruptly, he spun and roared, smashing a curled fist into the nearby training dummy.

Its wooden head shattered, spraying splinters across the training ground.

Bull stalked away.

Krem let out his breath slowly, bending over to brace his hands on his knees.

Grim clapped a hand on his shoulder.

"You're welcome," Krem said, straightening. He looked over at the rest of the Chargers staring at him, and frowned. "Well, what're you all standing around for? This is no time to get fat and lazy, weapons up!"

 

Dorian Pavus had never liked getting up at dawn. Something about doing so spoke of farmers and other sorts who hadn't the luxury to sleep in nor the option to stay up late engaged in fascinating activities with fascinating people. All right, so he stayed up late most evenings reading, but nevertheless sleeping in was a fine tradition and one he had no intention of breaking.

But he hadn't slept at all well. The window in his room had inexplicably developed a draft that sent an arrow of frigid air right across his face, and his dreams had been unsettled of late. From the harried expressions of those around him, he surmised he wasn't the only one, either. At least the kitchens were in full swing, enough so that he could get a cup of hot tea even though he'd had to take it to the courtyard to find peace enough to sip it.

So he had an excellent view of Iron Bull's temper tantrum and the direction in which he walked off. Without meaning to, Dorian pushed himself away from the wall on which he was leaning and followed.

 _Stop this,_ he told himself. _You're going to get yourself smashed into a perfectly coiffed smear on the rocks._

He kept walking behind Bull, eyes on those wide shoulders, the bare back with sculpted muscles shifting and sliding under silver skin.

_You're a total idiot. A Qunari in a temper, and the best thing you can think to do is trail off after him like some sex-starved bit of seaweed._

Although they were far from the only people awake, the garden was largely empty. Bull stalked to the middle of it and stopped, hands clenched into fists.

Dorian paused at the stone porch surrounding the garden proper and resumed leaning against the wall, sipping his tea.

"Get away from me, Dorian," Bull growled without turning.

"It's odd, don't you think?" Dorian said in his best Tevinter drawl. "Everyone's in such a foul mood lately. We had one good party and it's been nothing but a dreadful hangover ever since."

"Dorian…"

"Well, not ever since. Just since we returned from those caves. Even the Inquisitor's miserable, and here I thought you two had such a nice mome—" 

It really wasn't proper for anyone so huge to move so quickly. Bull towered over him, less than a finger's width away, neck bent to glower down. "Shut. UP!"

Dorian blinked and pretended to wipe a bit of spittle off his face, clearing his throat. He also pretended his heart wasn't trying to crawl out of his mouth, and hoped he didn't drop his tea. He knew better than to back away. One never ran from a predator. One tended to end up dead that way.

Of course one could also end up dead from facing down a predator, but since he couldn't both stand and run, he decided to keep leaning as it required less effort.

"I don't suppose you've noticed your temper is a bit short these days, have you?"

After a moment, Bull grunted and took a step back. "Maybe," he allowed.

Unexpected. He'd anticipated the Qunari maintaining his anger and irrationality. There might be an opportunity here, a window, and he wouldn't waste it. He dropped his own act and straightened. "A consequence of what, do you think?"

"Ah, how should I know?" Bull flapped a hand at him and walked away to sit heavily on one of the stone benches in the garden, shoulders slumped.

Dorian followed, but did stay out of arm's reach. Or what he thought was arm's reach, anyway. "I think you do know," he said. "I think we both know."

Bull looked up at him, lines of his face drawn tight.

"Tal-Vashoth," Dorian said, serious. 

He looked away again, nodding a little. "I think so. Maybe," Bull said, gaze absently tracking a blowing leaf. "Can't figure out why it makes such a difference, though."

Dorian didn't speak, choosing instead to create silence for Bull to fill. 

He didn't disappoint. "I always kinda figured those Tal-Vashoth bastards went insane because they had nothing to hang on to. But me, I've got the Chargers."

"And Evelyn," Dorian added quietly.

Bull glanced at him and away again. "Yeah," he said. "Her too. Responsibilities. I thought they'd keep me grounded. Guess I was wrong."

"What's changed? You were fine in the caves." He shook his head. "Well, actually, no you weren't. Not the entire time."

Bull's next sigh ended in a growl. "Just leave it alone."

"Do you really want me to?"

"Yes!" Bull scowled. "Mmph. No. Fine. Yeah, the rockfall. I know, I know."

Dorian nodded. "The rockfall. When you thought she had died."

"But she didn't."

"And the two of you had a rather enthusiastic reunion, as I recall." He shrugged at Bull's arched eyebrow. "All the rock. Sound carries."

"You sound jealous."

"Don't change the subject, Ben-Hassrath," Dorian chided, ignoring the butterflies tumbling around in his stomach. Deflect, redirect, and ignore. It had worked quite well in the past, and would work again. "But the next night, nothing. And your mood has gotten worse since. So which one of you has become the reluctant lover, hmm?"

No answer.

"Surely she isn't turning you down. Is that even permitted?"

"She can stop anything she wants, any time she wants," Bull said. "You know that."

He did know. The watchword was all but sacred, at least to any decent dominant, to be obeyed immediately and without question. And he had no doubts that Bull was a decent dominant, not after their first…

Well, 'discussion' was probably too polite a word for what had happened when Bull had tracked him down after Dorian had tried to warn Evelyn about Bull's intentions. Still, the relationship between himself and the Qunari had grown in leaps and bounds since then. They were, much to everyone's surprise including his own, friends. After a fashion.

"So she's put a stop to things."

Reluctant. "No."

Not that that made much sense. "Well if you're the one who's not interested in sex with her, then why are you so, forgive the phrase, tied up in knots over it?"

The sun had risen enough by now that people were starting to drift into the garden. Herbalists, mages, and even a few early risers among the courtiers. Bull looked at them. "If you're going to talk about this, let's do it somewhere else," Bull said. "Evelyn hates gossip."

Agreeable if surprised, Dorian nodded his head toward the interior of the keep. They dodged the growing crowds, and a line of people bearing sacks and barrels of supplies toward the courtyard. Vaguely he recalled something about a supply train being sent to Thom in Amaranthine. Finding a quiet space would be difficult now, but he settled on the library. It wasn't exactly close to the garden but it was comfortable, and even with all the spies about, the noise of the crows generally made it a safe place for a conversation one didn't wish to be overheard.

Nor did Bull change his mind during the walk, one surprise piled atop another. They settled in chairs outside of the nook in which Dorian spent most of his time, mostly because both of them couldn't fit in it at the same time.

 _Stop that,_ Dorian told himself, his mind helpfully displaying images of exactly how the two of them absolutely could fit at the same time.

He settled himself in a chair, folded one ankle atop his opposite knee, and arranged his teacup. "All right," he said. "What's happened to turn the Inquisition's most scandalous couple into frustrated celibates?"

But the Qunari didn't answer. He stared off across the tower library, arms on his knees, hands dangling.

Dorian waited, watching his expressions, misgivings growing in him by the second. He fancied he knew as much about the Qunari as anyone currently in Skyhold, save perhaps for Iron Bull himself. This business of being declared Tal-Vashoth was tantamount to a death sentence, from what he could tell. It was a slow death, often an ignominious one after a slow descent into madness.

Bull had been Tal-Vashoth for months now. Perhaps his ties – the Chargers, the Inquisitor – had only delayed the inevitable.

"It began when I failed her," Bull said quietly.

"How so?"

"In the tunnels. The rocks came down and I couldn't… I shouldn't have let her go past him. But I thought he was focused on me, I thought she'd be safe. Then she went off with the Warden."

"Yes, I've heard you don't trust her."

One ripple of muscle, a broad shoulder lifted and dropped. "She's all right when Cullen's near. But they were separated too."

Dorian took a sip of his tea. "Surely if the Inquisitor was safe with anyone in a cave infested with darkspawn, it was with the woman who destroyed a darkspawn army to stop a blight."

"You're missing the point, Dorian," Bull sighed, scrubbing his face with his hands.

"Well then please tell me what the point is, because at the moment it sounds rather like you've been pouting for over a week that you weren't able to predict a cave-in."

"It's not that!" Bull's roar echoed in the tower, startling the ravens into cawing flight.

Dorian arched an eyebrow. "I suppose 'pouting' may have been too mild a word."

With a low growl, he got up to pace. "I couldn't stop it. I couldn't get to her. I knew she was with that bat-shit crazy Warden, and fuck what Cullen thinks, I know that Warden would let her get killed if it meant killing the broodmother."

"But she didn't," Dorian said, leaning forward. "She didn't die in the cave-in, she didn't get killed getting to the broodmother, and we were in time for a dramatic rescue."

"I know she didn't! That's part of the problem."

"Well if you know what the problem is, why are we still talking about it?"

Bull sighed deeply and turned his back on Dorian. He braced his weight on the railing and hung his head. "We got to them," he said. "I got there just in time to knock back three of the bastards that she was holding off. She gave me this grin she has." He glanced over his shoulder at Dorian. "You know the one, you've seen it. In battle."

Dorian remained silent.

"The one that's all sparkling eyes and bared teeth, the one that says she loves the fight, could keep going for hours if there were enough things to kill." Bull turned, resting back on the bannister. "Then she saw the Warden, wiped the smile off her face, and slid through the fight like a sharp blade. Jumped up on that rock and opened the rift."

This still wasn't making sense. "And that was bad?"

"No," Bull said. "It was fucking beautiful. She was beautiful. Fire and blood and death and power. And completely, totally mine."

Dorian sat back and sighed softly, finally understanding. "Ah," he said gently. "My poor Qunari friend."

"I swear to all fuck, Dorian, if you say one stupid thing…"

"I assure you, I wouldn't."

Bull snorted and looked away from him.

"Have you told her?"

"No."

"You should."

Silence.

"She should know," Dorian said. "She might understand."

"She's human! She's not going to understand."

"Would you like me to explain it to her?"

"What am I, twelve? I'll tell her."

"When?"

"Soon."

"Sooner," Dorian suggested. "You're ripping her heart out right now, you know, and not doing your own any favors."

"Yeah," Bull said with a sigh of his own. "I know. One more way I'm failing her."

"Find your spine, man. Surely you have one somewhere under all that muscle."

Bull glanced sidelong at him and gave a reluctant smile. "Noticed the muscles, did you?"

"It's not as if you go to any pains to hide them. You do everything but polish them with a cloth while looking pointedly at the rest of us, waiting for compliments."

"Any time you want to polish them for me, you just let me know."

Dorian turned to set his teacup aside and tried to control any visible reactions. Some were more difficult to hide than others. "Handle the lover you have," he said, "before you try moving up to my level."

No one should have a chuckle that low and sensual. It wasn't fair. "She already gave me permission to fuck you."

The teacup fell to the floor, bouncing on the carpet. "She did— When did you— You've been—"

"Talking to Evelyn about having sex with you? Yes. When we were still heading to the caves. She did say she wouldn't mind."

He didn't like this Iron Bull, not one bit. This lazy, confident, slow-smiling Iron Bull was not at all to his tastes. Angrily, Dorian wiped tea off his thigh. "I rather think she would at the moment!" he snapped.

"Ah, even more incentive to clear the air with her," Bull said. "So once I've done that, then you and I can have another discussion about lovers and levels." He pushed off the bannister with one easy flex of muscle.

Dorian tried not to stare, lowered his gaze away from that chest. Not that staring at Bull's crotch was helping. He looked around, down, at anything. "I think not," he said, as cool as he could manage.

Bull crouched, picked up the teacup. It looked impossibly tiny and fragile in the Qunari's large hands. "You're partly right," he said. "You're thinking."

Dorian took the cup, met Bull's gaze. "Talk with her," he said quietly. "I am not your distraction."

Bull's smile faded away. With sigh, he stood up. "Vints," he said. "Always know just enough to fuck everything up."

With an airy wave of one hand, Dorian shooed him away. "Go on. I've wasted enough of my day on a problem you already know how to solve."

"We will continue this discussion later," Bull promised. Then he turned and headed out of the library.

Dorian waited until he was out of sight to smile. "That we will," he murmured.


	3. Chapter 3

Evelyn arched an eyebrow at Spymaster Harding. "Training maneuvers? He said that?"

"In those exact words."

Evelyn transferred her raised eyebrow look to Josephine.

"The duc, if you'll recall, has always been reluctant to allow Inquisition forces on his land," the Inquisition's ambassador said with a slight shrug.

"Yes, well the Inquisition is no longer an upstart force with a disreputable heritage." Evelyn studied the map on the war table. "I hardly think we'll need to strong-arm his lover this time. The question is, really, are the duc's forces capable of handling these Red Templars?"

No one answered her.

She looked across the table at the spot where Cullen would normally stand and found herself capable of a wry smile. "I don't suppose anyone wants to go and knock on the door of Cullen's honeymoon suite to ask, do they?"

Harding chuckled.

Josephine cleared her throat. "The latest estimates suggest the duc has rebuilt his army. Whether or not they're capable of handling Red Templars is unknown."

"Mm." Evelyn reached for her teacup. Empty. She sighed. "As much as I might want to do what's best for him, let's favor diplomacy for the moment. Back our men off to the border of the duc's lands but keep an eye on the situation. If the duc's fighters appear to be losing ground, we'll go in and mop up."

Both women nodded. "I'll send messages right now, if we're done for the morning," Harding said. 

"I think we are," Evelyn replied with a questioning glance at her ambassador.

"We have dispatches to go over," Josephine reminded her, "but nothing that needs all three of us."

Harding nodded and left the room quickly.

"Poor Harding," Josephine murmured. "Still not resigned to being the spymaster."

"She's good at it, though. The field agents respect her, and I'm comfortable with her." Evelyn walked out of the war room proper and down the hall to Josephine's office, settling into one of the chairs at the desk. "Anyway, if I can manage as Inquisitor, she can manage as Spymaster."

Josephine handed her a rolled vellum scroll with a gold wax seal. "Here. This came from Empress Celene. What would you be doing now, do you think, had none of this happened?"

"Likely I'd be married," Evelyn said, unrolling the scroll. "Don't ask me to whom; they were just settling in to the serious shopping when I was sent off to the Conclave, I suppose in a last-ditch effort to inject some responsibility into my list of qualifications. Does she do nothing all day but throw parties? At least this one's for hunting, but really, two weeks for a party?"

"No one stays for the full two weeks. It's unsophisticated at best, desperate at worst. I can decline, but we haven't paid a cordial visit to Orlais since Halamshiral."

"That wasn't so cordial, as I recall."

"By Orlesian standards, it was positively convivial."

"It also wasn't that long ago. Remind me again when three years pass and we still haven't been back."

Josie took the scroll back. "I'll find some way of declining," she said, nudging forward a packet of folded letters. "These are military matters that cannot wait for Cullen. Do you still want to get married?"

"I didn't exactly want to in the first place. I simply had to. Well, until the whole world got dumped into the midden." She leaned forward to take a packet of folded papers from Josephine. "Nice of the Maker to send such a timely intervention but a lot of people died to get me out of going to the altar. Now I don't suppose I'll ever get married."

"Never?"

Evelyn shrugged a little as she looked at the seal on the first letter. "To whom? Someone of appropriate rank I can tolerate personally who wouldn't object to my relationship with Iron Bull? Find me that paragon and I'll consider it. No," she sighed. "It seems my heart belongs only to unsuitable men."

"Men? Plural?"

With half a smile, Evelyn stood. "I'll just take these to my room," she said, holding the packet of papers aloft, ignoring the palpable curiosity beating against her back as she left.

The one good thing, she thought, about the proximity of her quarters to the war room and Josie's office is that both doors were very near the raised floor on which her throne sat. The courtiers were, by and large, too circumspect to approach the steps to the throne even when she wasn't sitting on it. As such, it gave her clear space to walk from Josie's office into the main hall, then make the sharp left and get to the safety of her room before anyone could do more than murmur polite greetings.

She really should socialize a little. Even her father had unbent his neck from time to time, deeming it important for a ruler to exert some personal influence over those who looked to him for leadership.

But not today. She could work on answers to the dispatches from her own desk, give herself the rest of the day to feel sorry for herself before shouldering the full burden of her office again. The fire had gone out in her room, but for once she didn't object. The cold nipped her skin, a sensation she welcomed as a distraction from her battered heart.

Bull stepped into the room from the balcony as she entered.

She stopped, felt the skip in her heartbeat.

When he didn't speak, when the silence between them grew too obvious, she spoke. "You were gone when I got up," she said, unconsciously hugging the packet of letters to her chest in a bid for comfort.

"Yeah," he replied. 

She waited for more, for some hint of a reason. An excuse. An apology. Anything.

"You're busy," he said after an awkward moment. "I'll come back."

Evelyn's stomach sank to her feet. She looked down, just in case she was in danger of stepping on it, and nodded.

Another bit of silence, another awkward nothing. Then he walked past her toward the stairs.

"Bull."

His footsteps stopped.

"When did that start mattering? Whether or not I'm busy?"

"Since…" He sighed. "Since I realized I had to have a conversation with you I really don't want to have. All right. Let's… We should talk."

He passed her again and walked toward the flat-topped chest at the foot of the bed. 

She dropped the papers on the couch and followed him. "I have to know one thing before you start. I have to know, or I won't be able to hear anything else. Are you leaving? Have you been trying to find a way to tell me that?"

"What?" He frowned at her. "Is that what's been going through that head of yours? No, woman. How do you still not understand?"

Bull reached out and snagged her arm, yanked her off balance and onto his lap, his other arm steadying her, settling her where he pleased. "I will never leave you. You belong to me. You are mine, Evelyn."

Her spine sagged. "It's a little disconcerting how comforting that is to hear."

"Why would you think I'm leaving you?"

"Well, you barely touch me or speak to me lately, and then Varric did."

"Varric touched you? 

"No, he left."

"Left? When?"

"This morning," she said, resting a cautious hand on his chest, relaxing a little when he didn't move her hand or twitch away. "On the supply train to Amaranthine. He said he'd told everyone goodbye."

"Sneaky little shit. No, he probably didn't tell anyone he was going. Except you." He stroked a hand over her hair. "You okay?"

"No," she admitted. "But I suppose I understand why he left. Things were getting… a little complicated between us."

"Too much heart, not enough crotch."

She had to smile. "Something like that."

"You love him?"

"He's very dear to me."

"Evelyn." He waited until she looked up at him. "Do you love him?"

It was difficult to look into his eyes and say it. "Do you mind?" she whispered.

"No," he said quietly. Then he grinned, just a little, just enough that she could see it. "I mean, if you were choosing to be with him and kicking me out your door, I'd put a stop to that."

Her eyebrows twitched upward. "You would, would you?"

"But I knew it was a risk when I started throwing you two together. I figured his heart was long gone, though, so it was safe from that angle at least. Another reason why him and not Cullen."

"Actually, he said the reason he's been turning me down was because he thought that if we had sex, he'd fall in love with me."

"Ah, magical love pus—" 

She put a hand over his mouth and wrinkled her nose. "Don't make it crude, it was a lovely sentiment."

He took her wrist in his hand and kissed her fingertips, making her heart leap at even this small sign of affection. "From a guy who writes smut."

"That's what I said."

"But you believed him."

She nodded a little.

"Of course you did. He's a good liar. I told you; he'd make a nasty Ben-Hassrath."

"You think he was lying?"

He tensed up. She could feel it in the set of his muscles under her and beside her, in the tautness of his neck under her fingers. 

"Hm," she said, leaning back a little so she could see his expressions better. "And somehow we've come back to what you wanted to talk with me about."

"Remind me to stop teaching you how to read body language," he grumbled.

She didn't rise to the bait. "Go on," she said. "I'm listening."

He grunted once, then fell silent. One of his arms remained around her back, the other over her lap, fingers curled around leg. Absently, his thumb moved across her thigh, a gentle stroke that sent ripples of warmth through her.

She tried not to squirm, not to react. He had been too sensitive to it lately and she didn't want to be set aside. Not again. Not now.

"All right," he said. 

After another minute, he tried again. "All right."

Silence.

"Bull, just say it. We can work our way backwards from there if explanations are in order, but if you keep searching for the perfect spot to start, you're never going to start."

"Mm. True. Fine. I love you."

The words he spoke were at utter odds with his serious, somber tone, but she couldn't help the jolt of delight, couldn't stop her hand from rising to stroke his face. "That's a good thing," she said softly. "I love you, too. I've known that for months."

"It's not a good thing, Evelyn."

"How can you say that?"

"You only think it's a good thing because you're thinking like a human."

"Of course I'm thinking like a human, I am a—" She stopped.

He nodded slowly, watching her.

"But you're not."

Another nod.

She shifted a little, edged around a bit to face him more completely. "Wait, so all that time ago when you said that Qunari don't have sex with people they love…"

"I meant it."

"Don't, though? Not can't."

"We can, it's just… If the Qunari have anything like perversion, that's it. It's wrong. Disrespectful." He lifted her, set her aside, and got up. "I'm not gonna say it's not done," he said, pacing away, "just like you can't say no brother's ever fucked his sister."

"Are you saying it's like incest?"

"Well, no. Not that bad."

Evelyn shook her head rapidly. "So all this time, whenever we touch and you turn away from me, you've basically been trying not to, what, throw up on me?"

"No!" He sighed sharply and frowned at her. "See, this is why I haven't wanted to talk about this shit. No good analogies."

"If you were waiting for someone to invent some, you were going to have a very long time of it."

"Fine. It's like… you people farting at dinner. You just don't do that and everyone judges you for it."

She stood, frowning sharply. "Well get over it," she snapped, "because it's getting done."

He snorted a laugh. "Think so, huh?"

"I know so. This whole thing between us started with sex, and I'm not going celibate just because you've decided your heart can't take the strain!"

"Easy now, Evelyn," he said, glancing sidelong at her. "Sex was how I got you here. It's not what keeps you here."

"Of course it's not, you idiot. What keeps me here is that I love you, too. I love you, you make me happy, you make me feel safe, and the sex is…" She stumbled over the right superlative. "That's why I stay."

He frowned and turned to face her completely. "No, it's not."

"I think I know why I stay with you, Bull."

She had surprised him. "Huh. No, you don't," he said. "That's why you could seriously think I might be leaving you. Maybe this division between life and the Inquisition was a bad idea."

"Couldn't have been that bad an idea. We did stop Corypheus."

He nodded slowly, staring at her. "But you don't know you stay because you belong to me. You don't know the only reason I don't control the Inquisition is that I never wanted to."

She met his stare. "Is this the issue you want to force?" she asked quietly. "If I ever thought you were trying to control it, I would have ended things between us."

"In the beginning, sure. I still could have done it, but not without breaking your spirit." He quirked a smile. "And I like your spirit."

"If you're trying to be funny, you're not succeeding."

"I'm not trying to be funny, Evelyn. I'm trying to make a point."

"Then make it. I have work to do."

He crossed to her in two steps, cupped her chin in the palm of his hand and tilted her head back. Whatever he saw just made him smile more. "Those eyes," he said. "All that spit and fire. Still so proud and defiant. I really am good."

Annoyed, she twitched away from him. "Now you're taking credit for my personality?"

He chuckled. "Only the parts I kept," he said. "Like a sculptor being proud of the marble he started with."

Evelyn rose, back straight, jaw tight. Without looking at him, she stalked to the couch and picked up the dispatches. "I am, as you pointed out, busy. If you want to continue this, we can do so tonight."

"Uh huh. Turn around."

Part of her didn't want to, just to prove her own point, but her desk was behind her. She turned.

He wasn't smiling now. He crooked a finger at her, nothing more than that.

Her spine tingled, body reacting to the invitation. Suspicious and curious in equal measure, she stepped toward him until she was standing with him in front of the fireplace.

Without taking his eyes off her, he tipped his horns toward the fireplace. "Throw them in," he said.

She blinked, looked down at the dispatches in her hand. Military matters, Josephine had said, that couldn't wait for Cullen. "I can't," she said, looking back at him. "I need to answer these, at least two of them are from—"

"Evelyn."

That dropped-anvil tone, flat and hard and absolute. The words died in her throat. She couldn't look away from his narrowed gaze, from the hints and promises of anger to come. 

Though he didn't seem to move, the leather of his weapon harness creaked and shifted. Somehow, she became aware of the towering mass of him, of his sheer power and strength. His voice dropped lower, the faintest suggestion of a growl. "Throw them into the fire."

Flutters exploded in her stomach, set her nerves jangling. She shivered, unable to prevent the reaction. Shame, guilt, brushed with fear and backed with a melting hungry warmth sizzled through her. Unable to drop her gaze from his moments before, now she found she couldn't meet it. Her eyes angled down, her head bowed just a little, and she saw the papers were trembling in her hands.

"Now."

Her hand twitched sideways. She watched the folded papers land among the cold logs and ashes.

He grunted his satisfaction.

She didn't look up, couldn't look up. Her mind chased itself in circles. She could hear him moving, reaching for something.

"Face the fireplace and kneel," he said.

Slowly, she sank to her knees.

He held a lit taper in front of her. "Light them," he said.

Nerveless, her fingers gripped the thin twist of waxed wick. The flame flickered wildly when it transferred from his hand to hers. "What?" she asked, her voice thin and thready.

"Nah," he said sharply. "You know what I said, girl."

The wax seals on the letters had been broken by Josephine, but Evelyn still could distinguish one from another. Caer Bronach had written twice, doubtless reports on the continued disappearance of their soldiers. One bore the seal of the captain sent with the troops in Val Royeaux to see to Divine Victoria's security. Beneath them were three others she couldn't see but were doubtless just as critical, just as urgent.

The flame flickered, but didn't go out.

She could stand up, she told herself. Get up. Just get up.

She didn't move.

"Evelyn, how much do I enjoy having to repeat my commands?"

She flinched. How, when he had never once lifted a hand to her in anger, when he had never punished her or hurt her for disobedience? "Please," she whispered. "Please ser, don't make me."

"Burn the letters, Evelyn," he said, cold, implacable.

Slowly, she extended the taper toward the papers. She closed her eyes, couldn't bear to watch herself do it.

He bent, blowing a sharp puff of air at the tip of the taper.

Her eyes flew open. One corner of the top dispatch had browned, but not burnt. The flame was out. She kept the taper extended.

"What's your word, Evelyn?"

"Vanish," she said blankly.

She hadn't even thought to use it.

His silence gave her time to absorb that fact, to start to glimpse the implications.

"You belong to me," he said. "What happens between us, happens because it is what I want. It happens when I want. I treat you well because I'm not an asshole who mistreats his property. I like you happy and content. I like you powerful and confident."

She shifted her weight to rise.

"Stay down."

She stilled.

His hand brushed over her hair. "I love you," he said. "You are the most beautifully lethal thing I have ever seen. Knowing how completely you belong to me, that's a rush. But don't ever forget that when I say I own you, I mean exactly that."

He stepped back. "Do your work," he said. "Lives depend on you. We'll continue this tonight."

She heard him walk off, heard him descend the stairs, close the doors behind him. She didn't rise, just stared at the charred corner of the letter, extinguished taper in her hand.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dorian Pavus, Love Doctor.

"Inquisitor?"

Nothing.

"Evelyn."

Evelyn blinked, shook her head. "Sorry. What?"

Harding and Josephine exchanged glances. "We… were asking if you wanted to abandon Caer Bronach."

Evelyn took a deep breath, tried to envision her personal problems in a darkened room. Firmly, she shut the mental door. "No, we'll not abandon it. The missing soldiers have been taken from the walls or out on isolated patrols. I'm inclined to believe we're dealing with a winged predator rather than anything more sinister. A dragon, perhaps. Send a message back with new orders. Small squadrons are to begin scouting the area, searching for any signs of a nesting site. And for pity's sake, stay off the walls. When they have one, I'll take a party out and solve the problem."

"And if they don't find anything?"

"Then we'll abandon the keep. Or appear to. I'll go and scout it myself or act as bait."

"Very well, Inquisitor."

Evelyn sighed. "I don't suppose anyone has any idea how much longer Cullen intends to be celebrating?"

"Not long," Josephine said. "Considering how long he's waited to marry her."

"I suppose I'm just not much in the mood for happy endings at the moment," Evelyn said.

Delicately, the ambassador changed the subject. "And what message to Val Royeaux?" 

"Does it seem odd to anyone else, the number of troops he's requesting?" Evelyn asked. "Do we even know anything about this captain? What are his politics, does he even support Lelia—Victoria and her reforms?"

"You don't trust him?" Harding asked.

"Today, Spymaster, I don't trust anyone. He gets no more troops until we've done a more thorough check on him. Ask Victoria what she thinks of him. He'll not have gotten anything past her." Evelyn pushed away from the war table. "Anything else?"

Neither said anything.

"Good. That's this day over, then. Only a million more to get through, and we should have everything wrapped up nicely."

 

Dorian returned to his rooms at an hour just late enough that he could feel sorry for himself for overworking without being so late that he could justify complaining about it to anyone else. Piling that atop his utter inability to recreate what everyone said he had done in the darkspawn tunnels, and he was quite ready to crawl into bed with a large bottle of robust wine.

In lieu of anything else large and robust.

When he opened the door, however, he saw his wish for a peaceful night of drunken oblivion go up in smoke. 

The Inquisitor was on his bed.

"I brought a bribe," she said, holding up a bottle.

Eyeing her distrustfully, he took the bottle and turned it over. "Navarran red," he said.

"A gift to the Inquisitor. Which, of course, means it might be poisoned but I'm informed it's a rather nice vintage."

Dorian tilted the bottle. "It is. One would hope they wouldn't waste such a grape, but with Navarrans, one never can tell."

"Shall we risk it?"

He snapped the heavy wax seal over the top of the bottle and worked the cork free, then took the bottle to a side table to a waiting set of glasses and a decanter. "Bribe accepted," he said, pouring the wine carefully. "You may begin."

"I spoke with Bull."

"No," he said, turning back around, bottle and decanter in hand. "You may not begin. Stop there. Go away."

"Dorian, I need your help."

"I have no doubts you do, but you'll not be getting it from me." He shoved the bottle at her. 

"I'm serious!"

"As am I! I can't counsel the both of you. Conflict of interest and all that."

She blinked and looked past the bottle and decanter. "He spoke with you? Got advice from you?"

Dorian sighed. "There, you see? I'm absolute rubbish at this sort of thing. I beg of you, Evelyn…"

"No one else here knows the Qunari."

"There's the Warden-Commander. She lived with them."

"And she's currently living in Cullen's smallclothes so I doubt she'd be much help."

He paused. "Well, there's an image." 

"Please, Dorian."

"Oh, very well. I shall give you as much time as this vintage deserves. If it's gone over or been poisoned, this will be a very short discussion."

Evelyn pulled her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. "If it had gone over, you'd know already."

"True enough, and that much has bought you the time you’ve taken so far. See how this works? Go on, regale me with the minutiae of your torrid affair."

He poured from the decanter into a large-belled glass. It wasn't really giving the wine the treatment it deserved, but given the way his day had gone, he'd need the support. Letting wine breathe took second place to some considerations. Not to be churlish, he poured a second glass and took it back to the bed, settling himself on it and handing one glass to Evelyn.

"How do I break free of him?" she asked.

He frowned. How badly could Bull's talk with her have gone? It was supposed to be about love, for Andraste's sake. "You mean break that Kas-berasala hold he has on you?"

She nodded, looking into her glass as though answers could be found in the reflections there.

"I don't know that you can," he said. "You'd have to send him away, that's certain. Would you even be willing to do that?"

She closed her eyes, shook her head. "No." With a sigh, she opened them again. "Yes. I don't know anymore. Maker, Dorian. I love him."

He took a sip of the wine, tasted the rich smokiness of it, let it linger in his mouth. "You say you spoke with him. What exactly did you talk about?"

"He said he loved me. We talked about how that may not be a good thing, since he's Qunari." She swirled the wine in her glass. 

"And that wasn't a problem?"

"No," she said. "Oh, he thinks it is, but…" She shrugged. "I know him. I could help him get past it. Social taboos are all well and good, but when your society changes, so can your taboos. We break them ten times a day before tea around here."

"You may be overestimating your ability to best Qunari conditioning, my dear. But now I'm curious. If that wasn't what sent you digging through your piles of tribute to find an appropriate gift for me, what was?"

She sipped her wine and didn't answer, but Dorian knew her well enough to know her blank look was indicative of anything but a quiet mind. He could wait. He would wait.

When he and Felix had come up with their desperate plan to stop Alexius, he had thought the dread Inquisitor would be some stern religious icon full of wrath and condemnation. Thrown together as they had been to fight their way back from a terrible future, he had learned to respect her abilities. But it was after that, after she believed in him enough to watch her friends die, trusted him, that he truly began to respect her.

She had never faltered in her support of him. She had stood by him through trouble with his family, stood by him despite the warnings from Chantry clerics about the evil Tevinter mage, stood by him against the whispers and rumors of her own people. It didn't matter to her that he preferred the company of other men. It didn't matter to her that he was a Tevinter mage. 

It had only ever mattered to Evelyn that he was Dorian.

So he called her friend in a world where he'd had precious few. He had failed, all those months ago, to make her see the danger in Bull's methods. He would not fail her again.

"He has never… Well, never before asked me to do anything I didn't want to do. Never failed to make me want it, to see to it that I enjoyed it," she said, looking still at her wine. "Everything he has ever done in our relationship was about me, for me. I felt… cherished. And in return, I gave him everything I had. Anything he asked for or hinted at, I would surrender to him."

"And that changed."

She nodded, just a little. "He asked me… He told me, _ordered_ me, to burn some dispatches. They were important. He knew it. He knew they were purely Inquisition business, an area he's never touched before."

Dorian frowned. "Why would he make you burn them?"

"To prove he could," she said softly. "To prove that he owns me, he said. Oh, he blew the flame out before I could actually burn them but that's not the point. He ordered me to do it, I didn't want to, and yet I obeyed. Somewhere in there, at some point…" She stopped, shook her head again.

He waited.

"He has this way," she said eventually, "of saying my name. Evelyn. From him, it can sound like the crack of a whip, the slam of a fist on a desk. And something happens to me. I don't know what it is, I just… I can't look at him, I have to duck my head. I can't stand up to him, I can't even think about it. All I can hear is my own pulse and everything inside me turns to sparks and smoke."

Dorian reached out to put his fingers under the bowl of her glass, nudging it higher. 

She drank.

"So," he said, not unkindly, "for the first time, you can feel the reins."

A tiny nod.

"Ah, Evelyn," he sighed. "I tried to warn you. He is Ben-Hassrath, and though he may not be one of their re-educators, he is still what he is. He's had months with you now, months to condition you, train you. He has made you into his creature, whether you like it now or not. I'm sorry, but that is the simple truth of the matter."

She hid her eyes with one hand, but he could see her lips trembling, saw her chew on them.

"You trusted him once," Dorian said.

"So did you."

"No, I did not. I said I believed he had your best interests at heart. You were the one to point out that that was not the same as saying I trusted him."

"Clever girl," she whispered, echoing his words back at him.

He nodded. "Even so. You willingly put your life into the hands of someone I warned you was planting his hooks in you. I warned you then that unless you broke free soon, there might be no way of doing so."

"Yes, well, singing an endless refrain of I Told You So isn't particularly helpful," she said, dropping her hand and taking another drink of wine.

"I have no help to offer," he said, taking the empty glass from her and handing her his mostly full one. "Except this: You trusted him once. You asked that we all trust him as well. In fact, as I recall you demanded we do so. And, to your credit, it seemed to be trust well-placed."

Dorian rose from the bed and took the empty glass to the decanter, filling it for himself. "Now I have no idea how anyone short of possibly another Ben-Hassrath could reclaim you from him. My point is, you have to decide if you trust him still."

"That's it?" she asked. "Trust him?"

"Trust him," Dorian said, taking another sip of the wine, "or get rid of him."

Her long fingers stroked over the glass. "I love him," she repeated.

"He loves you, too."

"Then why?" She closed her eyes again, shook her head. "Why do that to me? Why do that to us?"

"Mm." Dorian took a fortifying gulp of wine. Pity the vintage was so excellent. He was just going to have to go on being profound. "There too I might have an answer, though probably not one you'll like."

"Of course not. Why would I like any of the answers I get tonight?"

"My girl, self-pity is barely tolerable in the young and frivolous. In a person of power such as yourself, it is deplorable."

"Sorry."

"Yes. Now. I wonder what you know of what happens to Qunari when they are declared Tal-Vashoth."

"Some," she said. "Neria and I spoke briefly of it."

"And what did the esteemed hero have to say?"

"She talked about how Qunari are raised not to think or judge for themselves between right and wrong. She said without the moral grounding of Qunari society, most Qunari don't know how to function and fall back on simple animal instinct."

His eyebrows raised. "Hm. Actually, that's rather a good way of putting it. I'll steal that in the future, should it come up again."

"But she also said she didn't think I would have to worry about that with Bull. She said that he's ceded all that to me. I make the decisions about where we go and who we fight. I am his morality."

He tipped his wine glass toward her. "Ah, but you are also his creature, a fact which he amply demonstrated not only to you, but also to himself."

That struck her to silence, one they both filled with more wine. 

"So he's losing the boundaries placed on him by being in the Inquisition because he controls the Inquisitor," she said eventually.

"It might not be anything so overt," Dorian allowed. "He's still wrestling with all this himself, though it little behooves him to show any such weakness to you of course. But yes, I think he is testing his own limits and finding out that there are precious few."

"And if I don't find some way of placing limits on him…"

"Then, Your Worship, we will indeed have a Tal-Vashoth in control of the Inquisition. For as long as he lives."

"But how do I place boundaries on someone who… Who…"

"Owns you?" Dorian suggested.

"I really don't like it when you put it that way."

"Holds your leash? Is your lord and master?"

"Please stop trying to find alternatives."

"Very well. Are you ready for more bad news?"

She took a deep breath. "I suppose."

"The wine's gone."

With a faint smile, she glanced into her glass. "So it is. You've a mercenary soul, Dorian. No wonder you and Bull get along."

She untangled her legs and scooted off the bed to stand.

"I wonder if I might…" He cleared his throat, taking her empty glass and turning his back on her to put both glasses away. "I wonder if I might ask you a question."

"Of course."

He didn't ask right away. "Well, it's dreadfully tacky of course."

"I'd never reveal what passes between us in your chambers late at night after a bottle of wine."

"Quite comforting, I'm sure." But he still didn't turn around. "Look, did you actually tell him – that Qunari of yours I mean – did you say… That is, he led me to believe that—"

She took pity on him. "That I said if he wanted to bed you, I wouldn't object? I did."

The glasses chimed as he fumbled them a bit, then turned. "By the Maker's sacred ass cheeks, why?"

She tilted her head to one side and gave him a little smile. "Because you like him, and he likes you. He especially likes hunting you."

"Hunting me? How very vulgar."

"You like being hunted, too."

"I most certainly do not!"

"Enjoy it," she advised. "It's fun to get caught, trust me on that one. But if you could wait until he and I have things a little more straightened out between us, I'd appreciate that."

He nodded a little. "I wouldn't dream of doing anything else. But are you sure…?"

"I'm sure," she said. "I like you, too. It's nice to make you both happy with just a nod."

"No lingering feelings of jealousy?"

"Here, at least, is where I am glad for the Kas-berasala bond. He and I will always be what we are to each other. A dalliance here and there, on either of our parts, can't change that."

"Hm," he said. "Well. Now I'm feeling rather insulted that you don't feel the slightest bit of competition over this."

She chuckled and moved to kiss his cheek. "Good night, Dorian. And thank you."

"Good night, Evelyn. And good luck."


	5. Chapter 5

Evelyn sat in the main hall. This late, most of the lights were extinguished. The fire was still burning, if rather a bit lower than it would during the day. There were no courtiers to be seen.

Which wasn't to say it was empty. There was still plenty of work to do, though she did give a second glance at Gatsi as she walked past. The stone mason/historian spent more time lately on the plaques she brought him than he did on the restoration of Skyhold. True, he had assured her there would be work to do for years to come. There were still places where the walls gaped open, places that yet lacked proper roofing.

But work here in the main hall had been done for weeks and weeks. So it was odd to see him there with a small work crew.

"By the ancestors' hairy armpits, how can that mortar powder already? I mixed it myself!" A pattering of stone punctuated his words. "We'll have to set the scaffolding back up. Best do it now, while no one's around."

"Yes, ser. Right away."

"And stop calling me ser! I work for a living."

She should have gone to her room. Should have gone to bed. But she wasn't ready for the conversation, for the conflict. She wasn't ready to find out that she could not hold her own against him. So she sat where Varric had always been found, by the fire near the doors to the outside, and stared at the low flames.

_"Well, Princess, it's too late to go back so you'll just have to keep going forward."_

No, that was Neria's advice. Not his. She closed her eyes and tried again.

_"What, you can face down Corypheus and his army of nugnuts-insane Templars, but not one Qunari?"_

It's always easier to face down someone you hate than someone you love.

_"Maybe, but there's usually less chance of disembowelment."_

The wounds go as deep. You just can't see them or heal them with a potion.

_He pushed a flask at her. "Can't argue there. Here. It may not be a potion, but it can help for a little while. Trust me on that."_

Two quartered logs hit the grate, sending both embers and her daydream scattering. She opened her eyes, watched the sparks dance in the rising heat over the fire. Bull pulled out a chair next to her and sat much as she did: legs extended, hands laced over belly.

He didn't speak, so she didn't.

"Long day," he said finally.

It was an offer. Even an opening, of sorts. "Very," she said.

The new logs caught. Birch, she thought, given the papery bark. They burned bright, helping to set themselves on fire. There was a metaphor there, but not one she felt like looking at too closely.

"I take it this is about before," he said.

"It is."

He grunted acknowledgement. "All right," he said as the flames licked higher. "Explain it to me. What did I do?"

Her eyes widened. It hadn't occurred to her that he wouldn't even realize what he'd done. "Seriously?"

"Why else would I ask?"

"I'm hoping you know what you did, and you're just asking to see where my thoughts have taken me."

"I do know what I did," he said. "What I don't know is why it's got you all twisted up."

She stared at him.

"What?"

Evelyn turned a little so she could face him. "You honestly don't know. You, so good at seeing everything from every angle."

He growled. "Evelyn, this will go much faster and easier if you just tell me instead of making this about me being stupid."

"You broke your word to me."

"Gah, I knew you were going there. No, I didn't," he said. "I never let you burn those dispatches, I never intended to. I even left so you could get back to work. It's no different than when I locked your door to keep you away from Inquisition business, until Leliana picked the locks. It's not even that intrusive." 

"I wasn't talking about that. I'm talking about why you did it. You stepped on me just to prove you could," she said. "It was petty and cruel, and it served no purpose."

"Oh, it served a very real purpose, Evelyn. I'm just not sure you learned the lesson yet."

Her eyes narrowed.

"Come here, Evelyn," he said.

She felt the tug of surrender and got up to stand in front of him.

He rose slowly, deliberately brushing his body along hers. He towered over her. She didn't look up, just stared straight ahead at the center of his chest, watching his skin shift with his every steady breath.

She felt his fingers slide into her hair, longer now than the first time he had done so. She still wore it down when they were alone together. It was his rule, and she obeyed him.

His grip tightened by slow stages. He pulled, and she bent backwards, felt the table behind her, kept going back until she was pinned to it. Bull moved with her, covering her body with his, fingers fisted in her hair.

Since he had first told her he intended to own her, hardly a day had gone by when he hadn't touched her like this. Kisses, caresses, long, steady strokes of his hands and fingers, careful hints of pain that had ever only served to underscore the pleasure, all culminating in that first beautifully brutal time. When he took what was his. When he claimed her. Even now, months after she understood that he owned her, they rarely went to sleep without some kind of exchange, some kind of sexual contact that made her body sing. 

She had been, as Dorian had said, conditioned. She could no more prevent her desire than she could stop herself from dodging a sword. She wanted it. Wanted him to take what was his, make her enjoy it. Obedience to him. Desire for him. They were part of her now. She had been exquisitely trained to exactly this. 

And he hadn't touched her for days.

"Any time I want," he murmured. "Any thing I want. Any where I want. Do you understand me, Evelyn?"

"There are people here," she protested weakly.

"I know."

His free hand dropped to her thigh, slid under it, lifted it. Her thigh pressed against his hip, and he stroked the hard bulge of his cock across her. She expected the kiss, didn't expect it to be slow and gentle and deep. Desire threatened to drown what control she had, and struggling against it seemed not just impossible but wrong. This was what he wanted. He wanted her surrender, wanted her pleasure, and she wanted to give it to him. He owned her, body and soul. Her life was his.

She felt the heat of his hand shift higher, his fingers grazing her hip as they moved. He curled one finger under the leather tie that held them shut, snapped it, then wrapped his fingers over the waistband of her pants and began to pull downward.

"Vanish," she whispered.

His presence was gone, his touch ceased as abruptly as if he had in fact vanished.

Evelyn set her palms on the edge of the table and pushed herself upright. She didn't bother trying to stand on her own. Her legs were shaking, her heart racing. When she realized her eyes were closed, she forced them open.

"Are you all right?" he asked, frowning, concerned but not angry. "Did I hurt you?"

Did he hurt her. Maker.

"Never," she said, voice as shaky as her legs as she tried to keep her voice down, "never have you crossed that line. You always knew, even when I didn't, where Evelyn stopped and the Inquisitor began."

He didn't interrupt.

"You have always been aware of even the dignity and respect of my office. You kept most of our private life private, without making it shameful. Made it plain that we were lovers while keeping it clear that you knew when to back away.

"There are people here, Bull. _My_ people, the Inquisitor's people. And you thought, what, the Inquisitor should have sex on a table in front of them? Should get fucked while they watched?" She shook her head. "Do you even know when you lost track of that line between Evelyn and the Inquisitor?"

Thank the Maker he was listening to her. Thank Andraste he was thinking about her words.

Behind him, though she could not see past him, she heard Gatsi gruffly but quietly ordering the workmen back to their task.

"No," Bull said, voice low.

He pulled her to her feet and back to her chair, nudged her down into it, then tapped her arm. She looked down, saw a flask in his hand. Her mental Varric's advice came to life. "Maraas-lok?" she asked.

"What else?"

She took the flask and a drink. Just a small one. It still burned, lava trailing down her throat. It helped.

He took his seat again as well. "So," he said after a minute. "That's what I did, huh?"

She nodded. "To use a very old analogy, you took a riding crop to a horse that's going forward willingly. You chose to beat it just so you could prove to it the whip is there and for no other reason."

He grunted again and reclaimed his flask. "Do that to the wrong horse, and you've got an animal that spends the next hour jumping at shadows, waiting for another blow." He took a drink. "Kind of makes me an asshole, too."

"Yes, it does."

His chair creaked as he resettled himself. "I'm starting to think that horse thing is the best analogy I've ever come up with."

She let him think about it. After a moment, she reached out for the flask again, took it when he touched it against her palm.

"I can see it," he admitted finally, "but it didn't feel like that from in here. Still doesn't."

"I know," she said. "That's part of what makes it so bad. Because it means there probably is another whack coming, and I won't know when or even why. I suppose… I'm going to have to use my watchword now."

He sat up a little and looked over at her. "You did use it, and you should have. You were always supposed to use it," he said.

She could hear the frown, didn't need to look over to see it. "But I didn't want to have to," she said softly. "That was part of the… the joy of it. With you, I could let go of everything, every scrap of awareness or thought, every speck of control, and just feel. Just be. No tactics. No plans. No contingencies." 

She took another sip. "You had enough control for both of us, so I didn't need to have it. That's changed. I can't trust you to stop yourself, so I'll do it for you."

He brooded into the fire, silent now, the flames casting odd shadows on his saturnine features. On his lap, she watched the thumb of his hand absently stroke across the band of leather he wore tied around his pinky.

"In the grand scheme of things," she said, "I suppose this is hardly a tragedy. We've both seen what those look like and this isn't one. But I do feel a little like I'm mourning something."

"You ready to go up?"

So the conversation was over. Muffling her sigh and her disappointment, she nodded and stood. He took the flask back, tucked it away, then took her hand and led her across the hall to the door to their room and up the stairs.

Once inside, she began undressing silently, kicking off her boots. It was normally a task he reserved for himself, but not since the caves.

"Stop," he said.

She looked over, saw him sitting on the chest at the end of the bed.

He patted his thigh.

With rising hope, she padded to him on bare feet, settled herself in his lap.

"You are mourning," he said quietly, wrapping his arm around her to hold her steady. "You're missing Varric, and you feel betrayed by me. I broke your trust. That kind of double punch would take anyone out."

Evelyn rested her left hand on his chest, felt for the steady thump of his heart, let its rhythm soothe her.

"I can't change what I did." She could tell from the stops and starts of his breathing that he wanted to say something else, was trying to frame it for her. "I can only say you're right. Kadan."

"Kadan," she sighed, her muscles finally unknotting.

He stroked her arm, silent and comforting.

It helped.

"Now Varric, that I can do something about. We could send a letter to Val Royeaux. I bet Cassandra would love another go at chaining him up and dragging him to the Inquisition. You could be on your throne. That'd be hot."

Her laugh was soft, but true. "Tempting," she said. "But no. Let him go. He has his own mourning to do."

"Bah. He's not mourning, he's hiding."

"He loves Bianca."

"So? He spent half a night once telling me all about this meal he'd had at the viscount's place in Kirkwall. You think he never ate again?"

"It's romantic," she said.

"It's fear. He figures if he stays in love with someone he can never have, he won't have to risk getting hurt again. That melodramatic crap works on all you dewy-eyed females, too."

She tipped her head back to scowl at him. "I am not a dewy-eyed female!"

"You and the Seeker. All tough warrior on the outside, swooning maiden at heart."

"Asshole," she said, snuggling closer to him.

He brushed his lips over the top of her head. She toyed with the dragon tooth necklace he wore. 

"I’m sorry," Bull said quietly. "I wish I could be perfect for you."

"You are," she replied.

His soft huff of laughter teased strands of her hair. "I love you, too."

"While we're discussing uncomfortable new truths in our relationship, we should probably talk about that some more, too."

"Yeah, I'm not sure what to do about that one," he said. "Hold you, sure. Comfort you, yeah. But fuck you?" She could hear the distaste, tried not to let it sting. "That's about seven kinds of wrong."

"You did a good impression of wanting it a moment ago."

He grunted. "Told Varric once. You can't train an animal without training yourself."

So his responses to her were as involuntary as hers to him. That was interesting. Evelyn shifted around in his lap and knelt on the chest, one knee on either side of his legs. "Maybe you just need to learn that fucking isn't all there is," she said, brushing her hands over his bare shoulders.

He set both hands at her waist. "You're not talking about that 'make love' crap you humans write poetry about, are you?"

"Well, I am a swooning maiden type."

"Evelyn…"

"Trust me," she said softly. 

He still looked dubious.

"Want a watchword?" she asked, tilting her head to one side. "I'll say a word, you say the first word that comes to mind."

That earned her a chuckle. "I'm good, thanks."

"Still, it's not a bad idea."

"Katoh," he said.

"What?"

"That's my watchword. Nice and simple. I think I mentioned it before."

"What does it mean?"

"You know how Qunlat is. Means a lot of things." His hands slid over her waist, down to her hips and up again. "It means stop, but you stop because you've won a hard race or reached a goal."

"Like 'achievement'?"

"Something like that."

She laughed. "Your watchword is 'Congratulations, you made me use my watchword'?"

He grinned. "You're getting better at Qunlat."

"All right," she said. "I'll try not to laugh when I hear it."

"When? Mm, cocky. I like it."

She set a finger over his lips.

He stopped, clearing his expression and meeting her gaze.

She traced the line of his mouth with her fingertip, watched its progress, watched the line of his lips as they relaxed. "I love you," she said softly. "Sex can be incredible, but when you're with someone you love, when you love them and they love you? When that's in your heart when you come together, it's something else entirely."

Evelyn took her finger away and leaned in, kissing only his lower lip, taking it between hers. "It's more than lust," she whispered, then brushed her kiss across the corner of his mouth. "More than heat. More than just bodies."

"Even our bodies?" he murmured. He kissed her back, soft and brief.

"Even these bodies," she said, smiling a little before kissing him again. She slid a hand over his jaw through the day's growth of scruff, deepening her kiss by slow, steady stages; lips, then just the tip of her tongue touching his, coaxing him, encouraging him to take things further.

He didn't fail to respond. His body answered with no reluctance, she could tell that easily enough straddling his hips as she was.

"Remember when you found me? In the tunnels?"

"Stop talking. I was just starting to enjoy this."

She caught his chin in her palm and shook his head. "Listen. Do you remember?"

"Mm. Yeah."

"Later, when we made camp, and you dragged me off down that side tunnel? That was when you knew you loved me."

"I remember." His hand slid under her shirt, callouses scratching across her skin.

"Then we made love."

His chuckle was a low, pleased rumble. "I pinned you against a cave wall and ripped your pants off. That was fucking, Evelyn."

"No," she said. "No, it wasn't. It was fear and relief. It was 'you're alive' and 'I was afraid'. It was 'don't leave me' and 'I love you'. It was saying with bodies the things we had no words for. That's making love."

That got to him. He frowned a little in uncertain thought, his fingers stilling against her skin. 

"I love you. Through every problem we have and will ever have. Through the Fade and back again. If the Inquisition fell tomorrow and I joined the Chargers, just another fighter in your company, I'd love you still. I belong to you. My life is yours.

"Now let me say it without words."

Gaze locked on his, she pushed his shoulders and slid one knee forward. He put his hands behind him on the mattress and pulled himself slowly backward. Evelyn stopped at the foot of the bed, but Bull kept going until his feet were on the bed with them.

She pulled his boots off one at a time and dropped them to the floor. It was something he did for her almost every night and she relished the rare chances when he would let her undress him for a change. He seldom gave her the opportunity to fully indulge herself with his body.

Evelyn crawled up the bed, stopping to kiss the bare skin of his stomach. She undid the buckle of his wide leather belt, slid it away from him and let it, too, fall. The muscles of his stomach clenched briefly, then relaxed under her tongue as her hands tugged his pants lower. Her kisses followed their progress, halted briefly as she worked them over his erection.

There, too, her lips trailed, down the solid length of his cock, soft skin under her lips and tongue. He tasted like sweat and smoke, deliciously male, perfectly him. She left his pants at his knees so she could keep tasting him, licking him. She took the head of his cock in her mouth, just that and no more, stroking her tongue around and over it, feeding the part of her that had been slowly starving without him.

With one last kiss, she abandoned his body to stand on the mattress. She took off her shirt, staring at him, gave a slow roll of her shoulders to shrug it off.

He lay watching her, hands folded behind his head, expression anything but casual. His jaw was clenched, and the muscles in his arms, shoulders, and chest were flexed tight as he fought to remain where he was.

She smiled at the sight, visible proof of the power she held over him. She teased her fingers over the light leather band she wore around her breasts before slipping the knot apart. One slow unwrapping at a time, rolling it up as she went, she undid it, measuring and counting his breaths, the flaring of his nostrils, noting how his gaze had dropped entirely away from her face.

The leather, even smooth as she could make it when she put it on in the morning, still left ridges in her flesh that itched. She dragged her fingernails over them, across the swell of breast, across nipples that hardened at the cold air and the friction.

At her feet, Bull growled.

She relented and dropped her hands to her hips. The tie that held her breeches on had already been broken. It took relatively little pressure to push them down, though with her feet apart, they didn't fall all the way down.

Evelyn was an assassin, trained for silent motion and lithe balance. It cost her nothing to stand on one foot, stroke her hands over her thigh, down her bare calf, to push her pants leg off pointed toes. Gently, she lowered her foot back to the bed, straddling him still.

He sat up, muscles bunching. His hands closed over her hips, and he pulled her forward against his mouth. When his tongue slid through her curls and across her clit, she grabbed for the web of rope that spanned the posts of their bed, holding herself upright. He didn't bother with subtle niceties, so hungry, licking and sucking on her clit, angling her hips to give him the access he wanted.

One of her hands fell to his horns, holding on as the tip of his tongue danced across and around her clit, alternating with silken sweeps of his lips. His fingers dug into the soft, round curve of her bare ass as he steadied her hips that moved without her conscious control. She gasped for each breath, fought for it, desperately tried to hold herself upright. He knew her body, knew exactly how to move, how to tease her, and she burned for him.

She released the rope with her other hand, took his horns in both hands and pulled his head away. He could have fought her, could have dragged her with him, but he tilted his head back to look up at her. Evelyn went slowly to her knees, staring at the glitter of faded firelight in his eye. 

His hand moved from her ass, slid between their bodies as she dropped, moving his cock to nudge against her. His other hand rested on her lower back, holding her, supporting her. She sank onto his cock by slow stages, shifting her hips, working him deeper into her.

She couldn't take all of him, not at this angle. Not at any angle, really, but he filled her, thick and hard. She sighed long and slow as she settled fully onto him. "Yes," she breathed. Her arms slid around his neck, hands splayed, unable to span the full width of it.

Her legs trembled as she found her rhythm; soft, slow rocks of her hips caressing the length of him inside her. Her eyes fluttered closed and open again. She wanted to look at him, wanted to see him, wanted him to see her. To see that this was completion, only with him, like this.

The cold air had become a blessing to her overheated skin, chilling her parted lips when she licked them, bit them. The hand he'd had between them moved slightly, his fingers finding and rolling across her clit, quick and firm. Little whimpers and panting cries slipped past her lips still caught between her teeth. She rode him faster, harder, fingernails digging into his skin as she fought for control and balance. 

His fingers kept pace with her hips, soft then hard, tiny little circles that drove her higher, rising and falling with every sharp thrust of her hips. He didn't look away from her. His lips moved, saying things too softly for her to hear over her own ragged breaths.

Her orgasm hit, broke through her like the fury of a summer storm. Her body locked around him, back arching, any ability to move stripped away by the ecstasy she found with him. He ate her outcry, his lips over hers, his own sounds muffled. Her whimpers became his air. His words became her breath. 

The sharp spike of ecstasy faded to a deep, melting satisfaction. She forced her hips to move, rode him slow and languid and deep, the ripples from her orgasm still pulsing through her. She heard his breath hitch, catch, felt his body tense under her, his hand at her back clench into a fist, and drew back enough to watch him as he came. Both his hands moved to her hips, pushing her farther down onto him, spilling his cum deep inside her.

There was no reason to separate, no need to. Even as their heartrates returned to normal, as sweat dried and breathing eased, he stayed inside her. They didn't speak.

Finally, he nodded his head, once, then twice. Just that.

It was enough.

She slid backwards, then sidelong, dropping onto her side of the bed and letting him fall back onto the pillows. His arm came over her head then nudged under her, hand cupping her ass, pulling her against him. She buried her nose against his side, draping one leg over his. This was where she belonged. Now she was home.

"Kadan," he said, trailing off at the end.

She roused herself from semi-somnolence. "Hm?"

But whatever he had been about to say, he abandoned in favor of humor. "I don't have to write poetry now, do I?"

She patted his chest. "Having sex with you is a kind of poetry."

"Can't argue with that. We can still fuck, too, right? Even though Qunari don't do that with people they love?"

"We can," she said sleepily, keeping her eyes closed. "'Sides, you're not Qunari anymore. You're Tal-Vashoth, remember?"

That silenced him.

In the darkness, she heard him growl, "You couldn't have pointed that out to me nine fucking days ago?"

She fell asleep smiling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Sorry this was, you'll forgive the expression, so long in coming. This has been a hard few days, with one heartbreaking thing coming on top of another. it didn't end today, but today I did decide I wanted to finish this chapter and finish it right. Still needs an epilogue. I love my epilogues, don't I?)  
> (Welp, a few days later and a re-read, and I don't think it does need an epilogue after all. We're just gonna wave goodbye to Varric and let him go home, and any Dorian/Bull sexyfuntimes are left unwritten. For now.)


End file.
